Wednesday, July 07, 2010

"...female, non-violent prisoners will do about 25-percent of their sentence.."

According to Steve Whitmore, spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department, Lohan will serve her time at the Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood, California and will be segregated from the general jail population.

Lohan may only end up serving a few weeks of her 90 day jail sentence -- Whitmore noted that "female, non-violent prisoners will do about 25-percent of their sentence" because L.A. jails suffer from "an overcrowding situation."

The Los Angeles Times reports that most women only serve 20 percent of their jail sentence. Up until last week, male inmates were serving at least 80 percent of their jail time, but recently the sheriff's department began freeing men who were sentenced for non-violent offenses after they served only 50 percent of their time.

I don't think letting people off early is such a good idea but shouldn't the time served be uniform across the board regardless of sex? Isn't this blatant discrimination?

37 Comments:

Women are simply seen as less of a threat than men are. There's some rationality there, but it does very much depend on the case. If two prisoners have the same offense, having a disparate sentencing release scheme is certainly problematic.

Of course, in the UK they are proposing getting rid of jails for women and replacing them with community center type work where women need to check in and remain during the day -- to free up more space for male prisoners.

Women are simply seen as less of a threat than men are. There's some rationality there, but it does very much depend on the case.

How is a woman who is in jail for larceny, using, producing, or selling drugs (we can ignore the whole issue about whether people should be in jail for using, producing, or selling drugs), fraud, drunk driving, or any other crime for that matter, less of a threat than any man who is in jail for the same reason? Are female burglars less of a threat than male burglars because they can steal less because of their smaller size? Are female drug users less of a threat because they can consume less drugs than a male? Are females who write bad checks less of a threat than males who write bad checks because the females...well, I rarely ever hear of men writing bad checks so you'll have to figure that one out.

Pick your non-violent crime and you'll have a hard time figuring out how a female offender is less of a threat than a male offender. Heck, pick a violent crime and you'll have a hard time figuring out how a female offender is less of a threat than a male offender.

What LA County is doing is blatant discrimination. If I were a man or woman given to finding myself behind bars and knew about this, I might try to make a few bucks by filing a class-action lawsuit against LA County on behalf of the women who are being discriminated against by not being made to serve as much time as their male counterparts (nobody's going to take seriously a man who says he's being discriminated against by being forced to serve more time than a woman).

By that logic, we should be sentencing by race since some commit more crimes than others.

Strangely enough, we do.... kinda.

There is a very odd/interesting thing in sentencing. Men, of course, are more likely to get incarcerated than women and more likely to get longer sentences. The strange thing is race. Minority men are more likely to be jailed/get longer jail terms, but minority women are less likely to go to jail/get longer jail terms.

Black women have it the best, and Mexican men have it the worst (of course, this is all controlled for criminal background, crime committed, and the like).

And my first thought, after reading this was, "Does she actually learn anything by not serving her entire sentence or close to it." I don't pay much attention the the hijinks of Ms. Lohan but it does seem that she is singularly uncaring of what the legal system is telling her that she needs to do.

No matter what the definitions of the law are, Lohan is not a "non-violent" offender. She's a multiple drunk driver, a danger to herself and others on the road.

Why this case was plastered all over the local (!) news last night I do not know. It is a sign we have already crossed the Rubicon that we propagate these sorts of events as general cultural/news knowledge.

The human brain and its instinctual perceptions has simply not caught up to the ways life has changed since we were living in caves. Back in the H-G days, when physical might and toolmaking was key to controlling your world, larger stronger men were more dangerous.

Now that we live in a highly structured society with myriad laws, machines, and institutions, anyone can wreak financial, emotional or physical havoc no matter their gender. Unfortunately some interested parties such as the Duluth model are lobbying to convince people otherwise.

Lindsay Lohan isn't nonviolent. Just a few days ago there was some sort of news item about a punch. Then there is her drunk driving where she hits people with her car. Smoking pot is nonviolent. Writing bad checks is nonviolent. Selling a bag of crack is nonviolent. Having a fist fight in a bar is violent.

Lohan is headed down a bad path. If she gets sprung after 2 weeks there will be outrage.

By that logic, we should be sentencing by race since some commit more crimes than others.

We kind of do, in some ways.

What I am saying is that there is inherent bias in sentencing and parole precisely because of the discretion involved -- unless the legislature handcuffs the judge in the statute, which they have done in some cases (e.g., drug offenses). In most cases, the judge or the parole board are making a discretionary decision about the risk to the public of releasing prisoner A or prisoner B, given that one needs to be released to free up space. All kinds of biased assumptions can and will find their way into that determination, and some of those biases may have rational bases.

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The problem is larger than the percentage of time served by the sexes. Men and women are also sentenced differently for their crimes. Judges are much less likely to sentence women to prison terms, specifically long prison terms. More lenient sentencing only compounds the issue of parole leniency.

This would be a much more interesting statistic if it was a nationwide fact. If this only happens in LA County, well, it is not an indictment of unfairness to men nationwide. I mean, California is not exactly a microcosm of American Society.

Or, does this happen across the whole country? Then, the headline to this post would be a heckuva lot more reasonable.

Well the time actually served of a sentence is highly dependent upon behavior in prison. So if bad-check-passer Jack gets in fights in jail, violates rules, etc., while bad-check-passer Jacqueline is quiet and perfectly behaved, Jackie SHOULD be getting out first.

As to why males in general have poorer impulse control and higher levels of violent behavior than females in general, this is fairly well-understood as a biological difference.

I don't know, cathyf, here are 200 peer-reviewed studies (with commentary) that show that women can hold their own with regard to poor impulse control (at least on the domestic front):

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Frankly, women in situations in which they are ABLE to bully others seem to do so at a higher rate in my experience. Look at how some women in SUVs drive. Look at the statistics on which biological parent is much more likely to kill their child (poor impulse control - when the brat starts screaming).

At least back up your man-hating with some stats or objective information.

JG: You have to admit, women excel at good behavior better than men especially if there is something in it for them. IMHO, we sometimes confuse good compliant behavior with ethical behavior. There is a difference.

In the 1980s - before I ever heard about "men's rights" or anything like that - I just assumed that women were non-violent.

In fact, I assumed it so heavily that I didn't see things right before my eyes. I had a cute girlfriend who liked to drink a bit too much occasionally. One time she slammed a glass against my head in a bar (breaking it), another time she broke my nose. On really minor issues.

Here's the kicker: If you would have asked me if there was violence in my relationship, I would have said no, and I would have absolutely believed it. Because I only thought that "violence" meant ME hitting HER.

I didn't even see something that was right before my very eyes. That's the power of this social structure fantasy that feminists have set up in the last 30-40 years. But it's beginning to crumble.

JG: What you experienced during your girlfriend's 5 gin and tonics phase was all that anger and rage built up during the meek mild-mannered sober phase. It all has to come out somewhere. Mel Gibson does the same thing.

There was an article in the news last week about alcoholism and dichotomy between sober and drunk behavior. Alcoholics are prone to be better behaved while sober.

"Here's the kicker: If you would have asked me if there was violence in my relationship, I would have said no, and I would have absolutely believed it."

That's really interesting, it sounds like a mirror parallel to the tactics of women's centers at American colleges - bring all the women in and tell them abuse and rape are epidemic. Pretty soon the power of suggestion kicks in and they start viewing everything, including the most innocuous of their man's disagreements with them, as symptomatic of an abuser. "I had no idea I was so oppressed!"

Then we get white-knighting judges handing out judicial restrangement orders on the grounds of "she feels afraid of you" because everybody has been brainwashed by these activists.

But when she passed 5 gin and tonics, she would turn into Super Karate Fighter, kind of a female Bruce Lee.

I had a girlfriend like that once, but she wasn't meek or mild-mannered and when she drank she wanted to have very, very, VERY rough sex. It got to the point that I had to break up with her out of fear that I'd be severely injured (the scratches, bruising, and bleeding didn't bother me so much) or that we'd both end up falling through a window (one whole side of my home is covered in windows). When she was sober, she didn't enjoy sex as much...and frankly, neither did I. I just couldn't deal with the risk anymore.

SWWBO has trolled the blog on more than one occasion, but I do agree with her here. What the rest of the country thinks of as "California" - coastal sprawls of the Bay and the LA blast radius - is weird. They live in a different reality. Twisted and hypocritical. I lived there for four years, hated it and was thrilled when I got the opportunity to get back to the East Coast where people would drop all the passive aggressive behavior.